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Jesse Singal: Should Kids Medically Transition?
Should kids medically transition between genders?
The number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria has surged in recent years. In America, diagnoses have almost tripled from about 15,000 to more than 42,000 from 2017 to 2021. In the United Kingdom, the number of minors referred to the national Gender Identity Development Service grew from 51 in 2009 to 1,766 by 2016, leading to yearslong waitlists for care within the government-run health system.
This surge caused England's National Health Service to commission an extensive study of youth gender treatment. That study is known as the Cass Review, and its results dropped on April 10. The review's author, former head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Hilary Cass, concluded that modern youth gender dysphoria interventions are informed by "remarkably weak evidence" drawing on studies "exaggerated by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint" and that "we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress." The science, it turns out, is not settled—or anywhere close to it.
NHS England opted to stop routine prescriptions of puberty blockers following the review's publication, as have NHS Scotland and the Welsh government. Major American medical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which endorse prescribing puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric kids, have yet to officially respond.
American media coverage of the Cass Review, which could throw the entire youth gender treatment paradigm in this country into question, has been remarkably muted. But today's guest is never muted. Jesse Singal has been covering this topic—and taken a lot of heat for it—for years in the pages of publications such as The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and on his Substack, Singal-Minded.
Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.
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Jesse Singal: Should Kids Medically Transition?
Should kids medically transition between genders?
The number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria has surged in recent years. In America, diagnoses have almost tripled from about 15,000 to more than 42,000 from 2017 to 2021. In the United Kingdom, the number of minors referred to the national Gender Identity Development Service grew from 51 in 2009 to 1,766 by 2016, leading to yearslong waitlists for care within the government-run health system.
This surge caused England's National Health Service to commission an extensive study of youth gender treatment. That study is known as the Cass Review, and its results dropped on April 10. The review's author, former head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Hilary Cass, concluded that modern youth gender dysphoria interventions are informed by "remarkably weak evidence" drawing on studies "exaggerated by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint" and that "we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress." The science, it turns out, is not settled—or anywhere close to it.
NHS England opted to stop routine prescriptions of puberty blockers following the review's publication, as have NHS Scotland and the Welsh government. Major American medical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which endorse prescribing puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric kids, have yet to officially respond.
American media coverage of the Cass Review, which could throw the entire youth gender treatment paradigm in this country into question, has been remarkably muted. But today's guest is never muted. Jesse Singal has been covering this topic—and taken a lot of heat for it—for years in the pages of publications such as The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and on his Substack, Singal-Minded.
Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.
45.6K
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27
comments
Why YOU should surveil the state | Ford Fischer | The Reason Interview
The News2Share cofounder, Ford Fischer, is revolutionizing news coverage.
41.2K
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15
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Elica Le Bon: War with Iran?
Elica Le Bon, an attorney and Iranian-American activist, talks about Iran's recent strike on Israel
59.2K
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66
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Regulating smartphones? Jonathan Haidt vs. libertarians | The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie
The author of "The Anxious Generation", Jonathan Haidt, argues that parents, schools, and society must keep kids off of social media, but libertarians tend to disagree.
583
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Stop Obsessing Over Our Children's Happiness | Abigail Shrier | The Reason Interview
Abigail Shrier is author of the best-selling new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up. She argues that the mental health of Gen Z—people born between 1997 and 2012—is a mess because an infantilizing therapeutic culture pervades every aspect of their lives.
0:00- Why do kids have no interest in growing up?
3:37- Do kids see too many doctors?
4:10- The difference between adult therapy and child therapy
7:48- How many children are in therapy?
9:32- Therapy in K-12 education
13:00- Who is Elizabeth Loftus?
16:35- Has every child been traumatized?
18:05- What is trauma?
20:33- Who is Viktor Frankl?
24:20- The redefinition of trauma
28:20- How to understand what our ancestors experienced?
30:44- Are we delaying adulthood?
32:04- What happened to after school jobs?
34:06- Is social media making kids sad?
37:02- Why do parents surrender authority to experts?
42:36- Are we done with the cult of experts?
48:38- How to be a good parent
50:16- How to fix mental health at school
https://reason.com/podcast/2024/04/10/abigail-shrier-stop-obsessing-over-our-childrens-happiness
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Shrier stresses that she's not against psychological counseling and help per se, but she believes too many unqualified and misguided people are causing far more problems than they solve.
Her previous book was the controversial Irreversible Damage, which looked at the rapid rise of girls identifying as transgender. We talk about the roots of today's therapeutic culture, the extent of the problems it causes, and how parents, teachers, and young people themselves might find a better way forward.
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